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Supporting Health & Wellness at LearnUpon
At LearnUpon, we’ve always prioritized the need to look after each other’s, and our own, health. After all, most people spend a third of their life in work, so they want to feel supported and have their contribution to the company valued.
It’s fair to say that the global pandemic has changed our day-to-day lives, and we have all had to adjust to new ways of living and working. Saying that, there are some perks to working from home that some of us can enjoy (bye bye commute!). Looking after our mental health should never be overlooked, so it’s important that we ensure we’re helping to support our employees’ wellbeing, particularly during this period of uncertainty, and into the future.
To start, we ran ‘Unwind’ sessions for all LearnUpon employees and published a monthly newsletter with tips on maintaining good mental health. At the beginning of 2021, we wanted to understand how we could elevate this program and use our own platform to scale it.
We decided to take a 3-step approach:
- Create a set of Wellbeing Principles
- Design online learning courses for our new hires and people managers
- Build an interactive training program for our employees, featuring guest speakers and on-demand content
Defining our Wellbeing Principles
Our core values have been built by our people, aka Luppers, to help provide guidance on what we hold ourselves accountable to in everything we do at LearnUpon.
Our core values:
- We put our customers at the heart of everything we do
- We strive for the best solution not the easy one
- We go the extra mile to deliver work we are proud of
- We work together as a friendly, supportive team who like to have fun
In collaboration with our Leadership team, we explored and identified how our core values could help create a complementary set of Wellbeing Principles.
Living these values every day means our people can bring the best version of themselves to work, and start each day with a healthy mindset. However, we also understand that there can be challenges in bringing our best selves to work each day.
Our Wellbeing Principles:
- Healthy and happy Luppers provide the best customer experience
- Strive to be the best leader you can be by leading by example
- We go the extra mile to ensure we are our best selves which enables us to deliver work we are proud of
- We encourage each other to communicate openly in a caring way and support each other’s wellbeing
Building our Health & Wellness Program
With our Wellbeing Principles defined, we decided to establish a Health & Wellness online learning program. Our aim is to nurture a culture where Luppers feel psychologically safe in work through learning and workplace initiatives. Ultimately we want this program to create awareness and cultivate a space for all Luppers to access health and wellbeing materials, tips and tricks, and on-demand ‘Unwind’ sessions.
Our new programs feature:
New Hire Program
This course is specifically for all new hires, but we also encourage everyone at LearnUpon to take the course. New hires will be enrolled in this course when they start their new role. It contains information and resources on key mental health topics, and suggests ways to maintain a healthy mindset.
Manager Mental Health Program
We want our Managers to be empathetic and compassionate in all life scenarios, so they can have conversations with Luppers to support them both inside and outside of work, particularly when someone reaches out for help and guidance while working at LearnUpon. This program consists of topics such as how they can approach mental health conversations within their team and includes small steps managers can take to regularly check-in with their team members.
On-Demand Program
The power of learning is realized when we can practice new ways of doing things. Everyone will have the opportunity to practice during our monthly ‘Unwind’ sessions where they can take a break from their regular day-to-day and come along to an ‘Unwind’ session hosted by external guests and internal employees. These sessions range from desk yoga to meditation to an open conversation on topics related to mental health. We understand that not everyone can attend these sessions at a particular day or time, so we record the live session and upload it to our On-Demand course catalog so employees can watch back when it suits them best.
We launched our new Health & Wellness Program as part of Mental Health Awareness Month in May 2021, and we’re so excited to see it’s impact and capture feedback from our employees so that we can continue to grow and develop it. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to mental health and wellbeing, but it’s hopefully a step towards normalizing these conversations and spreading awareness in the workplace.
Diversity, Equality & Inclusion at LearnUpon
Alongside our Health & Wellness program, we’re working on Diversity, Equality & Inclusion initiatives. As part of Pride 2021, we have lots planned to celebrate throughout June and beyond, including DE&I events to empower our employees to reflect together, discuss what Pride means to them, and how we can all ensure that our workplace is a safe space where Luppers can truly be their unassimilated, authentic selves. Alongside this, we’ve collated educational and informative DE&I materials into one online resource open to all Luppers.
Our goal for Diversity, Equality & Inclusion at LearnUpon is to champion a space where everyone feels welcome, safe, and part of a supportive community by encouraging our employees to live our core value of working together as a friendly and supportive team every day. Watch this space for more information on our DE&I initiatives!